La Salle: Explorer of the North American Frontier

by Anka Muhlstein

Overview

Seventeenth-century North America was a dangerous, untamed land, a vast wilderness where settlers, fur traders, and missionaries all struggled to eke out an existence. But the New World was also a place that attracted a special breed—men with a thirst for adventure and discovery. Robert Cavelier de La Salle, whose energy and single-minded ambition made him one of the greatest explorers of the time, was such a man.

At the age of twenty-four, La Salle crossed the Atlantic to America. Like Columbus before him, he was obsessed with finding a western passage to China. But the New World so intrigued him and inflamed his imagination that he abandoned the Far East for the mysteries of the still uncharted regions of North America.

La Salle’s explorations took him all over the continent, and finally, in 1682, he followed the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, where he claimed the territory he had traveled through for France, and named it Louisiana in honor of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

Throughout his adventurous years, he never lost sight of this grand strategic goal, which was to link the Great Lakes to warm water ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The author combines impeccable scholarship with a novelist’s narrative power and eye for stunning detail in this portrayal of La Salle’s life and explorations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628720051
Publisher:	Arcade Publishing
Publication date:	02/07/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	403 KB

About the Author

Anka Muhlstein was born in Paris in 1935. In 1974, she began her writing career through the publication of French materials, specifically biographies. In 1996, she won the Goncourt Prize in 1996 for Letters from Russia. She is also the two-time recipient of the History Prize of the French Academy and the author of Monsieur Proust’s Library and Balzac’s Omelette: A Delicious Tour of French Food and Culture with Honoré de Balzac. She resides in New York.

Table of Contents

Author's Note ix

1 From Rouen to Quebec, 1643-1667 1

2 Clearing the Land, 1667-1669 18

3 Monsieur de La Salle's Indian, 1669-1671 34

4 The Governor's Ear, 1672-1673 48

5 A Divided Colony, 1673-1675 65

6 A Canadian Seigneur, 1675-1678 79

7 The Sound of the Great Waters, 1678-1679 92

8 The Illinois Prairies, 1679-1680 108

9 Indian Territory, 1680-1682 126

10 The Mississippi River, 1681-1682 141

11 Quarreling in Quebec, 1682-1683 159

12 A New Departure, 1684 173

13 Tristes Tropiques, 1684-1685 185

14 Monsieur de La Salle's Death, 1687 202

Epilogue 218

Bibliographical Note 221

Notes 222

Index 237

Editorial Reviews

Robert Cavelier de La Salle is largely forgotten in the annals of exploration in North America. Muhlstein ( Baron James ) resurrects him in this lively biography and adventure story that also portrays the struggle for power between lay and religious officials in Quebec. Educated by the Jesuits in France, La Salle resigned the priesthood and traveled to Quebec in 1667 to search for the Northwest Passage. He focused on the Great Lakes and rivers that led him to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The arrival in Quebec of a new governor, the Comte de Frontenac, in 1672 set the stage for La Salle's more extensive explorations, as the two men conspired to circumvent the powerful Jesuits. La Salle learned Indian languages and customs; Nika, an Iroquois, became his trusted guide. La Salle claimed Louisiana for King Louis XIV in 1682. On a return voyage from France in 1687, his ship got lost in the Mississippi Delta, and as the party struggled through swampland, LaSalle was murdered by two of his own men. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Although educated by the Jesuits, La Salle did not have the temperament for the priesthood and made his way to Canada in hopes of discovering the route to China. He soon gave up this idea in favor of a life as a fur trader and explorer of the interior of a little-known continent. Using published collections of documents, Muhlstein follows La Salle throughout his journeys, showing his difficulties with creditors as well as his friendly relations with the native tribes. She also details the ill-fated attempt to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi that led to La Salle's untimely death in a trap set by his own men. This well-written account is intended for general readers and undergraduates but will also be useful for specialists. The definitive biography remains to be written. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/94.]-Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., Marquette

Library Journal

Superbly evokes the American wilderness and subtly conveys its effect.

The New Yorker

Fascinating . . . a fitting tribute to one of the noblest figures of the Grand Siècle.

Le Figaro Magazine